As the Singapore participant in the European Union Visitor's Programme last year, I had the privilege of speaking to several European Muslim scholars and researchers.
Listening to them, it became clear to me that the politics of Islam in Europe and in Southeast Asia pivot on two different struggles.
In Southeast Asia, it pivots on the endeavour to define the state and national culture, while in Europe it pivots on the struggle for placement within the nation-state.
The political trajectories of Islam in Southeast Asia and Europe have been determined by different socio-economic conditions and histories.
In Malaysia and Indonesia today, Muslims are seeking to weave a national culture that can be synthesised with the rhythms of globalisation.
Unlike their European counterparts, political power lies firmly in the grasp of the Muslim community which, in turn, influences the expression of Islam. Most Southeast Asian Muslim intellectuals and activists agree that Islam must go beyond the private realm of personal piety and quiet learning to also offer an alternative model of politics and bureaucracy.
It can operate schools, run banks, provide comprehensive laws and even provide, some argue, an alternative to nationalism as the ideological underpinning of the nation-state.
Most Southeast Asian nations were born from the throes of anti-colonialism.
Nonetheless, the modern state today has become a key element in the Islamic political imagination. Islamic political party groups like Partai Keadilan Sejahtera in Indonesia and Parti Islam SeMalaysia in Malaysia, for example, have used existing democratic processes to good effect.
This has left the grave onus of responsibility on Muslim political leaders and intellectuals to interpret Islam in a way that comports with the accepted duties of the modern state to engender pragmatic models of multiculturalism and provide the solutions to the economic imbalances between ethnic groups. It is still unclear if they will succeed.
In Europe, on the other hand, the Muslim struggle is one for space within well-established nation-states and national cultures. It is the politics of belonging played out under different European models of 'multiculturalism'.
At one end of the multicultural spectrum is the French assimilationist model where to be a citizen is to embody French culture and little else, while, at the other end, is the British model that promotes greater cultural autonomy to the point of isolationism.
European models of multiculturalism are today experiencing fissures with their Muslim communities in the wake of the Paris riots and the Danish cartoons controversy.
Racism and xenophobia have plagued Muslim immigrant communities not only at the grassroots but also institutionally as well. Fear and ignorance of Islamic values and practices have built invisible walls, as a 2005 study by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance concluded.
According to the study, racist and xenophobic rhetoric has crept steadily into national and European Parliament election campaigns over the past two years. While it varied from country to country, the study noted how Muslim immigrants have become easy targets of politicians seeking to heighten cultural insecurity in an increasingly complex and pluralistic world.
But both assimilation and isolation are untenable for Muslim communities. Thus Muslims must concern themselves with strategic integration, seeking specific points of socio-cultural reconciliation between themselves and the host society to facilitate dialogue and engagement.
Muslims are also increasingly framed as a 'security issue', especially where the non-integration of Muslim communities is too quickly and conveniently linked to Islamic radicalism. From here, it is but a short step to pointing at the Madrid and London bombings as well as the Van Gogh stabbing to proclaim Islam a security concern. But such convenient linkages have alienated Muslims in Europe.
Still, the suspicion cast over the perceived failure of Muslims to adopt European values, especially in the aftermath of a Muslim-related controversy, is inevitably followed by a redemption of Islam in that its intellectuals will attempt to explain Islam's dedication to peace and harmony.
This cycle has made some young 'third generation' European Muslims tired of justifying themselves and deeply cynical about Europe's ability to treat them as equals.
The fact that many European Muslim communities are embedded in urban ghettos and economically marginalised has resulted in disenfranchised young Muslims who carry European passports but feel severed from the national culture. Such Muslim issues and problems seem almost intractable and cyclical.
Nonetheless, a key reason for the largely rational tone of debate thus far has been the emergence of pluralism within the Muslim communities. Extensive media coverage and globalisation have ushered both extremist assertions by militant groups and the more cosmopolitan perspectives of the Muslim middle class into the public square.
This will force competing claims and assertions to engage and address each other and, consequently, check each other. This plurality of Muslim voices in public spaces - which also obtains in Southeast Asia - is a good thing.